She looked at him curiously. "That's what I like about you," she said, soberly. "You talk to me as if I had some sense—as if I were a human being. If you were to flatter me, now, and make love to me, I never would believe in any man again."
He smiled again in his frank, good way, and drew a picture from his pocket. It was a picture of a woman bending down over a laughing, naked child, sprawling frogwise in her lap. The woman's face was broad and intellectual and handsome. The look of splendid maternity was in her eyes. They both looked at the picture in silence. The girl sighed.
"I wish I was as good as that woman looks."
"Not with a big Chicago brewer for a father, and a husband that beats you whenever the mood takes him."
"I admit that's hard. I think the atmosphere of that Heron Lake hotel isn't any great help to you."
"Oh, they're a gay lot there! We fight like cats and dogs." A look of slyness and boldness came over her face. "Mrs. Shellberg hates me as hard as I do her. She used to go around telling: 'It's very peculiar, you know'"—she imitated her rival's voice—"'but no matter which end of the dining-room I sit, all the men look that way!'"
The young lawyer laughed at her in spite of himself.
And she went on: "But they don't, now. That's the reason she hates me," she said, in conclusion. "The men don't notice her when I'm around."
To hear her fresh young lips utter those words with their vile inflections was like taking a sudden glimpse into the underworld, where harlots dwell and the spirits of unrestrained lusts dance in the shadowy recesses of the human heart.